


Reason

by Tsunderathalos



Category: Gun Gale Online - Fandom, Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga), Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
Genre: Coping, Depression, F/F, Healing, Hope, Long-Distance Relationship, Masturbation, Meaningful Conversation, Sexualized Death, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 17:47:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17791955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsunderathalos/pseuds/Tsunderathalos
Summary: Elsa Kanzaki hates her life.  But someone gives her the strength to ask for help, and a reason to keep going.





	Reason

Elsa’s heart was racing. The footage from the end of the last Squad Jam was paused on her laptop, the computer lying half-closed and set aside atop days of dirty clothes. She didn’t need the video anymore at this point; she remembered what happened all too well. The weight of Llenn’s slight body pressing down on her, the weight of the tiny woman’s ferocity overpowering her. The angelic grin as Llenn invoked their promise and the fiendish smile as she leaned in to her neck. The way her eyes shone like they only ever do when the Pink Devil comes to the fore.

She remembered the feeling of Llenn’s teeth sinking into her throat, taking her, ripping her flesh and her blood and her life and her everything away. She shivered, lying on her messy comforter, one hand tracing where she wished Karen’s teeth had marked her real flesh, the other almost covering the sound of her gasps with the noises it made between her thighs. Elsa recalled how it felt when she returned to her physical senses when Llenn killed her, pulling off her headset in the afterglow of the most intense orgasm of her life. She came undone chasing the memory of that pleasure and the fulfillment that only Llenn, only Karen, could ever give her.

Slowly, her breathing steadied, the pounding of her heart slowing to the gentle rhythm it had only come to know because Karen came into her life and showed her a wonder on the edge between life and death that she had never imagined before. Eventually, she felt sufficiently connected to reality to pull her laptop close and open it up to check the time. 03:30. _Fuck. I can’t keep-I need. I need help. She’ll get my message when she wakes up. I have to text her now. I don’t -know if I could. Tomorrow._ “Ungodly late, but...she’ll get my message when she wakes up.

She pulled up the chat client she and Karen use for out-of-game stuff and typed out a direct message. “ _Hey. I’m sorry, I know it’s late, but when you get a chance, can we do a video call? I know I need to focus on work, so we can’t meet up irl, but I really want to talk to you face-to-face, Karen._ _Let me know either way! ~mwah!_ ”

Elsahit send before she could have too many second thoughts, and caught sight of her reflection resolving in the blue light of the display. Bedraggled hair and catastrophic makeup , fresh tear tracks running down her face. Butshe was smiling, somehow. Talking to Karen did that to her. _I’ve got rehearsal in five hours_ , she thought. _I can finish this breakdown later._

She grabbed the cleanest pair of pajamas she could find in what glow from the streetlights filtered past her blinds, and entombed herself in a nest of blankets, kicking her comforter to somewhere near the foot of the bed. Pulling a pillow to her chest, she murmured a tiny “Goodnight, Karen,” and closed her eyes.

 

 

Show time. Elsa was fresh from a shower after rehearsal, and had put on the one shirt she had managed to nick from Karen’s place when they last met up in Tokyo. Karen ought to have had plenty of time to get home and get comfy after her last class for the day. They had set up a time in the late afternoon for their first video chat, about aweek after Elsa’s early morning message and Karen’s bemused agreement at an actual human hour. Absurd, in hindsight, that it had taken them this long to think of it, but maybe all that time spent in GGO made them both forget there were other ways for people to talk than just in-person or in-game. Or maybe they still had trouble being anyone other than Llenn or Pitohui around each other. Maybe that was why Elsa had set this in motion. She needed to talk to Karen.

The insistent chime of an incoming video call pulled Elsa back to her senses. The picture of Karen’s smiling face as the other woman’s avatar brought her the focus she was going to need. She took a deep breath, let it out, and clicked answer.

The chat client connected her to the real Karen, and she felt some of the tension from pretending to be an angelic sontgstress melt away when her devil’s face lit up to see her. She knew she must have been wearing a matching grin. Karen was the reason she was still here, after all. But that didn’t mean she was okay. In fact, it brought a new problem of its own.

Karen noticed her outfit, and the blush Elsa was hoping for worked its way up her cheeks. “Is that my shirt?” she asked, her voice tinged with a shade of indignation. Perfect. Elsa tugged at her collar, pulling it closed to her face. “Is it? That must be why it smells so nice.” She pulled it to her nose, breathing in the scent of her detergent. There was no way it still smelled like Karen after she’d slept with it for days and had it washed twice, but Karen didn’t know that. Besides, it was the thought that counted, right?

She leaned into the camera, wielding her most contented satisfied-cat grin, the one that had melted so many old lovers wills’ and could probably still turn Goushi into a quivering puddle on demand, and purred “What are you gonna do about it?”

Karen’s eyes flashed with something, and Elsa had to suppress a squeak and a shiver as the taller woman leaned in too, from entirely too far away, and growled “I’m gonna want that back next time we meet up for real, Elsa.” Those eyes and the sound of her name from that voice cut her to the core. She always loved Karen when she got like this, when she pushed back, gave no ground and offered no quarter. That go-for-broke, Hokkaido-accented devil king side of her is what first drew her to Karen, what first enchanted her with the younger woman. Karen doesn’t quake at her attitude, doesn’t bend to her whims without question, doesn’t back down when she’s difficult. She challenges her when she’s wrong and holds her accountable for the way she acts and lives. And that...that may be just what she needs more of in her life.

_Play time’s over_ , Elsa thought. _This is gonna suck, but...I gotta tell her. I can’t do this by myself_. She sat back, schooled her expression into something more serious, and let out the breath she’d been holding since she resolved to have this conversation when she sent that message last week. “Karen,” she began, “I have a confession to make. Will you hear me out?”

Karen mirrored her motion, releasing her own held breath as she leaned back up in front of what had to be the cute little table in her living room. The glimmer in her eyes faded as she got settled, but didn’t disappear altogether. Elsa could see the pinpoints of banked flames in the corners of her eyes. Were they always there? How could anyone miss that beautiful red-steel glint? She refocused on why she wanted this conversation in the first place. Karen was waiting.

_Well, she’s willing to listen. Here goes._

“The time you killed me, at the end of the Second Squad Jam, and I missed the afterparty in the saloon? I had to log out. When you killed me, I had an orgasm, then and there. Lying in my pajamas on my bed with my old NerveGear from the SAO beta on my head. I was too shocked and embarrassed and busy doing laundry to play any more that day but...Karen, that was the best I’ve ever had.”

At some point, she realized, she had clenched her eyes shut. They’d fooled around some at Karen’s apartment, but sex was too far for Karen at the time, and the fear that she would be disgusted with Elsa made her chest tighten painfully. When she opened her eyes again though, it was to take in the sympathy and understanding in Karen’s gaze. Wait. Did she-

“Did you know that too?” Elsa didn’t have the energy to shriek, but her voice broke under the weight of her resignation. There were tears in her eyes already. She hadn’t even gotten to the really hard part yet, damnit.

“I...suspected.” Those damn words again, just like when Karen saw through her last stand attempt to hide her identity. _Of course,_ she thought, venom coursing through her thoughts and her veins and leaking out into her expression, judging by the startled widening of Karen’s eyes. _Of course this perfect girl sees right through_ _me_ _to just how gross and fucked up I am_.

“Elsa, it’s okay.” Karen’s warm and comforting voice pulled her attention back to the face on her screen and she felt the poison in her veins burn away at the sight of Karen’s gentle smile. She wondered if Karen wore the same expression when Llenn told Pitohui to keep her promise. Her breath hitched, and she felt tears start flowing as she broke, really broke, in front of Karen for the first time.

“It’s not!”

“Elsa-”

“It’s not, Karen! That wasn’t the last time! Every day I crave that feeling. It’s all I can think about! Getting killed by you was the climax of my whole-damn-life, and reliving it gets me off like nothing else! The rehearsals, the concerts, interviews with the press, talk show appearances- all the stuff that used to be my dream growing up makes me want to crawl out of my own skin now! It makes me sick and I hate it!” She was almost screaming, now, the tightness in her throat making her voice croaky and coarse even as the pain in her chest fought to get _out._ Karen sat through it all, being so infuriatingly patient and understanding. _I don’t deserve that,_ Elsa thought. _Stop looking at me like that. I’m not good. I’ll make you see._

“I’m a fucked-up girl who still just wants to die, even after everything you did to save me from myself before. I fucking broke my promise to you! I told you I wouldn’t do anything crazy like risk myself again, but dying like that, being killed by you, is all I want! Only you, Karen.” Her throat was raw and her voice was shot. All she could manage was an almost-whispered “I want you to destroy me, to take away my everything, even though I love you. Because I love you. How fucked up is that? How fucked up am I?”

“Elsa. Please, look at me.”

How did this fucking angel woman respond to all that with such earnest affection in her words? Elsa pulled her hands away from her face, with and sticky with a lifetime of held-back tears, and she looked at Karen. Really looked. Had there ever been such a gentle devil? Her eyes really did look like they were glowing, kindness and acceptance burning in those deep blue pools like candles in the night.

“I am so, so sorry you feel like this. That you’ve gone through this. That you’ve had to hide all this pain. I care about you, a lot, and I’m telling you: I don’t think you’ve broken our promise.”

“What? Karen, I-”

“Have you tried to hurt yourself? Have you willingly put yourself in physical danger?”

“No, but Karen, haven’t you been listening? I-”

“We’ll get through this together. You don’t have to carry your pain alone anymore. I’m with you.” Elsa knew. She’d those words hundreds of times from Goushi, but when Karen spoke them...

“You really mean it,” she gasped, hand covering her mouth as she searched Karen’s face for any uncertainty or insincerity. But she could tell. She knew Karen. And Karen meant every word.

“I do. When you fall, I’ll always help you up. If you can’t reach your goal, I’ll lift you up until it’s within your grasp. Whatever you need to feel like a person, whatever it takes for you to care about yourself as much as I care about you. I’ll help you get there, Elsa.” Elsa saw Karen’s hand rise and fall before the webcam, an offer of comfort aborted by necessity of the distance between them, and she cursed the fact that they couldn’t talk face-to-face. “So please don’t give up on yourself, and please don’t give up on the life you’ve built. You can learn to love living again. I promise.”

“How can you say all that? How can you believe any of that about me after what I just told you?!”

Elsa needed to understand. _Why do you care about me so much? What do you see in me?_

“Because you helped me learn to love myself, whether you knew it or not. Because I became who I wanted to be, became comfortable with myself, because you came into my life. Because I believe in you, Elsa. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be yourself. You’re a better person than you think you are.

Elsa would never forget the way Karen looked then. Her eyes burned with focus and sincerity and compassion and a determined acceptance that made her shine in Elsa’s eyes. As she spoke, her mouth formed the softest, warmest smile that Elsa had ever seen on her. It was honest, and warm, and unafraid. It was everything.

“Karen...thank you.” She wiped at her eyes. God, she must look like a mess. There’s Karen, though, looking at her like she’s her whole world. “Could we do this again sometime?”

“Of course we can. I’m always willing to talk to you. Goodnight, Elsa.”

“Goodnight, Karen.”

Karen ended the video call on her end, and Elsa closed her laptop and started getting ready for bed in an exhausted daze. She had told Karen the worst things about her and she didn’t hate her. Wasn’t disgusted with her. She wanted to talk again, wanted to help her if she needed it. She cared about Elsa’s life, her happiness.

Elsa wasn’t sure where her brokenness started anymore. Didn’t know what needed fixing and what was just her, there were so many cracks in her heart. But she trusted Karen to help her find out, to really look with her. To make her see what made Karen believe in her like that.

“You’re the reason I can move forward in life at all, Karen. The reason I even try. Goodnight, Karen.” She pulled the covers over her and tugged the collar of Karen’s ginormous shirt to her lips. “I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day to these amazing ladies. Treat yourselves well, readers.  
> Thanks to Vulgarian for their sacrifice as beta reader.


End file.
